Wind industry demands overload solution in NW

Tuesday

May 24, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 24, 2011 at 2:14 AM

GRANTS PASS — The wind energy industry demanded Monday that the Bonneville Power Administration fix problems that have forced the shut-off of Northwest wind generators while hydroelectric dams fill the grid with power produced from a heavy spring runoff.

By JEFF BARNARD

GRANTS PASS — The wind energy industry demanded Monday that the Bonneville Power Administration fix problems that have forced the shut-off of Northwest wind generators while hydroelectric dams fill the grid with power produced from a heavy spring runoff.

The complaints voiced by the American Wind Energy Association and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., at a wind energy conference in Anaheim, Calif., illustrate the problems green energy faces as it grows and tries to merge into a power system that is not ready to fully exploit it.

The conflict was generated by the highest spring runoff since 1997 in the Columbia Basin, where Bonneville markets power from 31 federally owned hydroelectric dams, providing about a third of the power for the Northwest.

"The reason we are in this situation is we connected wind to our system as fast as any utility in the country," Bonneville spokesman Michael Milstein said. "The reality is that when both these power sources are being fueled by nature, we can't always control the volume we get out of it."

Blumenauer complained that Bonneville hasn't done enough yet with $2 billion in federal stimulus funding to expand transmission lines, and has not adopted solutions identified in a 2007 report for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council on ways to store wind energy at times it is not needed.

He estimated the shut-offs are costing wind power generators millions of dollars at a time when they need help attracting investment to keep growing. "There's a disconnect between Bonneville's short-term actions and (the Obama) administration's long-term stated goals" supporting wind energy, Blumenauer said.

Milstein responded that the Northwest reached the goal of 6,000 megawatts of wind power a dozen years faster than the report expected and is working on strategies such as giant battery systems and reverse-pumping reservoirs suggested by the report.

Rob Gramlich, senior vice president of public policy for the American Wind Energy Association, said Bonneville was allowing other power sources to keep producing, and had not sold as much power as it could to utilities outside the Northwest.